Course Description and Program
To make sense of our globalized world, it is important to understand how and with what consequences modernization affects religion and secularity world wide. Traditional modernization theory à la Auguste Comte or Max Weber had claimed that modernization would lead to a continuing decrease of religion. Modernization theory then fell out of favor at the end of the 20th century (Stark 1999). Currently, however, and on the basis of massive amounts of global data, modernization and secularization theory have again gained much prominence (Norris/Inglehart 2012/2004, Inglehart 2021, Pollack/Rosta 2017, Stolz 2021). However, the modernization-value-secularization link is not a linear one, and research has shown that various transitory backlashes and contextual influences of the region are important. This course will give students an overview over classical and modern theories of secularization and value change, show them with what methods such theories are tested and make them familiar with the most important results of the current research.
If they have not yet done so, students will acquire the skill of interpreting statistical tables and graphs in order to make sense of the most important results of value change and secularization research.
A special emphasis will be on difficult cases for the theory of secularization. How can the theory make sense of religious revival in Orthodox countries, the Islamic revival since the 1970s, the Pentecostal movement (since 1900), or the fact that global population projections actually show the religious population growing much faster than the nones (Pew 2015)?
Another special emphasis will be given to consequences of value change and secularization. What does it mean for countries, regions, and the world, to have a growing gap between very religious and very secular countries, populations, and sub-populations? What problems are likely to appear and what solutions are possible? Themes of discussion and possible writing assignments comprise questions of accommodating religious pluralism, religious backlash against secularization, and religious-secular conflict

1. Theories of Secularization and Value Change

• Defining religion, secularization, and values
• Classical theories of secularization
• Modern theories of secularization
• Inglehart’s theory of value change
• Critiques of secularization theories

2. Measuring Religion, Secularization, and Value Change

• Measuring secularization
• Measuring value change
• Problems of measurement and causal inference

3. Research Results on secularization and value change

• Secularization and value change in Western Europee
• Is the US an exception?
• Secularization and value change in Asia
• Religion and the gender and age gap worldwide

4. Cases of Religious Revival

• Religious revival in Orthodox countries
• Explaining the Pentecostal movement
• The Islamic revival since the 1970s
• World wide projections of religious populations

Learning Outcomes
Learning outcomes are:

• an overview over classical and modern theories of secularization and value change
• a clear sense of the methods with which such theories are tested and the skill of interpreting statistical tables and graph
• familiarity with the most important results of the current research

Teaching and Evaluation Methods

Every week the course consists of 1h lecture and 2h seminar/discussion. Students will be asked to read a paper / book extract a week, and to summarize and discuss the arguments. Students will also be asked to assess their own country in terms of value change/secularization and argue whether or not the predictions of modernization theory fit their country. We will also try out the measurement tools of value and secularization research on ourselves in the classroom to get a feel for possible cross-cultural bias and measurement problems. Students are expected to write a short 5-page research paper and there will be a final exam

• Participating in class: 20%
• Research paper: 40%
• Exam: 40%

Bibliography

1. Berger, Peter L., Grace Davie and Effie Fokas. 2008. Religious America, Secular Europe. A Theme and Variations. Farnham: Ashgate.
2. Bruce, Steve. 2002. God Is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell.
3. Höllinger, Franz and Johanna Muckenhuber. 2019. "Religiousness and Existential Insecurity: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis on the Macro- and Micro-Level." International Sociology 34(1):19–37.
4. Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs Summer:22–49.
5. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Inglehart, Ronald F. 2021. Religion’s Sudden Decline. What’s Causing It, and What Comes Next? New York: Oxford University Press.
7. Molteni, Francesco. 2021. A Need for Religion. Insecurity and Religiosity in the Contemporary World. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
8. Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. 2012 (2004). Sacred and Secular. Religion and Politics Worldwide. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9. Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life. 2011. "Global Christianity. A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population." Vol. link
10. Pew Research Center. 2016. "Religion and Education around the World." link
11. Pew Research Center. 2016. "The Gender Gap in Religion around the World."
12. Pew Research Center. 2017. "In America, Does More Education Equal Less Religion?" April 26:1–23. link
13. Pew Research Center. 2017. "Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century." Nov. 8.
14. Pew Research Center. 2018. "The Age Gap in Religion around the World." June 13:1–96.
15. Pew Research Center. 2015. "The Future of World Religions. Population Growth Projections 2010–2050."
16. Pollack, Detlef and Gergely Rosta. 2017. Religion and Modernity. An International Comparison. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17. Stark, Rodney. 1999. "Secularization, R.I.P." Sociology of Religion 60(3):249–273.
18. Stolz, Jörg. 2020a. "Secularization Theories in the 21st Century: Ideas, Evidence, Problems." Social Compass 67(2):282–308.
19. Stolz, Jörg, Detlef Pollack and Nan Dirk De Graaf. 2020. "Can the State Accelerate the Secular Transition? Secularization in East- and West Germany as a Natural Experiment." European Sociological Review 36(4). doi
20. Voas, David and Mark Chaves. 2016. "Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?" American Journal of Sociology 121(5):1517–1556.
21. Weber, Max. 1978 (1920). Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Last updated: March 30, 2026